Global Courant 2023-05-01 21:51:42
Matías Bagnato (45) has many lives. He was reborn the day a murderer killed his entire family and he saved himself by jumping out of the first-floor window of the burning house on February 17, 1994, in what has since been known as the Massacre. of flowers.
He was born again when the Asturian Fructuoso Álvarez González was recaptured on December 4, 2011, hiding in a false ceiling of a country house that he had built to hide, after “the monster”, as he identified it, re-entered the country, from Spain, where they had released him, and threatened him by phone.
He was born again this Sunday, April 30, 2023, when he found out that the ruthless murderer had died in prison, at the age of 63, the victim of an infection, after filing one or another appeal before the Justice to be granted his freedom.
Fructuoso Álvarez González (above), when he was arrested in 2011. He was hiding in a shelter in a farm in Tortuguitas.
As soon as he found out, Matías cried non-stop. The killer never stopped threatening him, either directly or indirectly. “I have people outside following him,” they heard him say in the Ezeiza prison, where he had been behind bars for 12 years.
Now Álvarez González – sentenced to life in November 1995 – was in the hospital, recovering from a hip operation for a fracture suffered on December 19 after falling in his cell.
On January 6, he was fitted with a prosthesis, but an infection caused him constant health problems, which worsened on April 4, when he had to be transferred to the General Zonal Hospital for Acute Patients in Ezeiza and later referred to the health center located in the inside the Federal Complex 1.
Matías Bagnato and the memory of his family and the baby who were murdered in the Flores Massacre. Photo Constance Niscovolos
There he remained intubated and in intensive care until this Sunday, when he died as a result of “septic shock.”
“When they sent him to the prison, he put fecal matter in the wound to obtain freedom,” Matías said that relatives of other detainees told him in an anonymous message on social networks.
This Monday holiday, for Labor Day, Matías received journalists at the headquarters of the Argentine Aircraft Association (AAA), since he is a flight attendant at Aerolíneas Argentinas.
The two-story house, destroyed by fire.
He was accompanied by his lawyer Luciana Carrasco and some friends he made in his role as a member of the Madres del Dolor group, including Jimena Adúriz, mother of Ángeles Rawson, murdered by goalkeeper Jorge Mangeri almost 10 years ago.
His beloved grandmother, his great companion, Norma Calzaretta, could not be there, who was saved from dying in the fire because the previous morning she had traveled to Mar del Plata with friends and died on June 1, 2020, at the age of 91.
“I would like to tell you something that I can do for the first time. That I never did it because I was afraid. During these years I managed to start a family. Many times they asked me if I had managed to have a family and I never said it because I was afraid that he take this new family away from me,” he said.
Matías Bagnato, broken in tears, together with his lawyer Luciana Carrasco. Photo Constance Niscovolos.
Breaking down in tears, he added: “I am in a relationship with Nicolás, Nico, I love you. Thank you for accompanying me during these years.”
According to what he said, his partner lost his parents and three brothers were left alone, among them Sebastián, who suffers from Down syndrome. “These two are my family today, they make me extremely happy,” she remarked.
The Flower Massacre
In the early morning of February 17, 1994, Álvarez González – married to a second cousin of Matías’ mother – set fire to the two-story chalet at Baldomero Fernández Moreno 1906 (Flores), annoyed that José Bagnato (42) did not pay him money that he owed.
The owner of the property, his wife, Alicia Plaza (40), his sons Fernando (14) and Alejandro (9) and a friend of the latter, Nicolás Borda (11), died who had an absurdly tragic fate, since he He had stayed to sleep that night for the first time outside his house.
Matías, in front of the house of the tragedy, in 2011.
Matías, then 16 years old, jumped from the window of his room, on the first floor. “I felt the fire coming out of the dining room window on my feet, also on my back, which burned me,” he told Clarín.
Hours later, at the police station, he saw Lucila García de Borda, the mother of Nicolás, the little friend who died in the fire: “She hugged me and said: ‘My house is your house.'”
The woman died, like the murderer of her son, on April 30, but in 2021. She had four other children and the pain accompanied her until her last day.
Lucila García de Borda, mother of Nicolás, the 11-year-old boy who died in the fire. She passed away on April 30, 2021.
Now Matías left behind “the panic of never being able to lead a normal life.” He had to live in fear of going out into the street, at times even under 24-hour custody, because Álvarez González repeated that it was his “account pending” and he had it sworn to him.
“You’re dead,” he told him on the phone and cut him off. Now the one who is dead is him. And Matías, with a new life, finally.
EMJ
